"Three Kingdoms" Manchu Translation

In this article we have taken the Manchu translation of The Romance of Three Kingdoms, a Chinese literary masterpiece by Luo Guanzhong during late Yuan dynasty, as research topic to make philological explanation and contrasted studies from the perspective of comparative literature so as to make clear of its cause, process, editions, texts and its influences to the afterwards.The whole paper consist of three parts like introduction, main body including three chapters and the conclusion as well as an appendix in the end of the book, in which illustrate several pictures from different editions of the Manchu and Mongolian versions of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.In the introduction, the presentation of the research topic under discussion, precedent academic accomplishments and the research approaches used in this paper are introduced.Chapter I, Historical Research to the Manchu Translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, including three subsections, is arranged for philological and historical studies to the Manchu translation process during early Qing dynasty, which made its occurrence as an organic component of the Manchu cultural construction campaign in its rising days. Given the above mentioned case, it is demanded that when we study the Manchu translation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms we must place it in the context of Manchu rising and cultural construction and in the first place expound the true case of Manchu politic and military development at that time, including strategies and measures for cultural construction, central establishment of secretariats and book collection from its neighbors. This become the knowledge background for our advanced, specific discussion. We dealt with it in the first section of this chapter and in the second section made the in-depth and systematic discussion to the translation cause, process, translators and xylograph making of the Manchu translation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some Chinese materials indicate that Nurhaci, the father of Manchu-Qing dynasty, ever read the Romance of The Three Kingdoms, because he had thought it as a think tank. The translation task in the beginning was initiated by Dahai Bakshi, a Manchu scholar who was well skilled at both Manchu and Chinese and ever reformed the Manchu writing system, by Sure Han’s order in early days of his rule, then paused after Dahai’s death due to the expostulation from Chinese officials and changed evaluataion of Sure Han to the significances of the work, which resulted in a long term silence until taking up again during early years of Shun Zhi by Mergen Prince Dorgon, the prince regent and uncle of Emperor Shunzhi. The translation come into its end in7th year of Shun zhi(1650) and according to the Memoir of the Shunzhi Emperor it was issued to the Manchu officials in the17th year of Shunzhi, which naturally lead to the deduction that the woodblocks were made during the time between Shunzhi7th year and the17th year.Chapter Ⅱ, Textual Research of the Manchu Version of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, including three subsections, is arranged for the discussion of the different editions of Manchu version, contrasted comprehension of both Chinese and Manchu texts and the exploration to the Chinese original for the translation. The Manchu version of the work under discussion produced out many different editions including original manuscript, scribed copy, woodblock and late handwritten copy in the course of translation, making xylographs and circulation in the world. We in this article did our best to make clear and describe the basic station of the existent copies of the Manchu translation for as to facilitate academic world. This is the first task we did in this chapter. In the second section we made a contrasted comprehension to both Chinese and Manchu version with the focus on the Jia Jing xylograph of Chinese text and Shunzhi xylograph of Manchu text, and we discovered that the Manchu translation originated from an anonymous Chinese edition which had intimate relation with the Jia Jing copy. In National Library of France there is a series of handwritten copies of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, that is an odd text because it is on fact a Chinese text linguistically but written in Manchu transliteration as a whole. Through some contrasts, we discovered that some volumes of it based on the Chinese edition called Li Zhuo U criticized while the others based on the Chinese edition called Mao Lun criticized.Chapter Ⅲ, Impact Analysis of the Manchu translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, including three subsections, is arranged to discuss the apparent and in-apparent impacts produced by the translation task such as political and military influence, literary and artistic impacts and the mediator’s stand for Mongolian translation. The original purpose of Manchu translation of the Romance is of course for the use in the field of politics and military affairs, some late world materials indicate that in early days of Manchu rule it sure played some roles in its politic and military life to some extents, for examples, Hailanca and Eldengbuu, two famous Manchu commanders of Qian Long period, either read the Manchu version of Romance and thought it as military think tank. Circulation of the Manchu version of the Romance among Manchu produced literary and artistical resonant effects in Manchu and Sibe people, particularly in the oral singing tradition of Manchu and Sibe. The oral tales and singing texts about the three kingdoms undoubtedly originated from the Manchu version and become ethnic literary legacies of Manchu and Sibe people who up to now reserve the oral and written texts about the three kingdoms. Otherwise the Manchu version immediately resulted in the production of Mongolian translation of the Romance and thus exerted impacts on Mongolian literary life. According to what is known to us, there are at least three different Mongolian translations of the Romance, all originated from Manchu version, and each of them have certain numbers of printed and handwritten copies, which need demanding studies.Conclusion is a sum up of this time research and talk to some problems left for the future.